


Take It From the Top

by nerdiekatie



Series: Take It From the Top [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Getting Back Together, He misses it, M/M, Reunions, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Telepathic Bond, Time Travel Fix-It, adashi centric, or really absence thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 02:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15985373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdiekatie/pseuds/nerdiekatie
Summary: Shiro gets sent back to the start of it all. One-shot."Until then, he’s on Earth, and there’s no time to change anything except-Except one thing. "" 'H’lo?' a sleepy voice answers.'Adam.' "





	Take It From the Top

No figure comes out of the mist to give him a mission. No one tells him what’s happening.

Shiro finds himself hurtling toward Earth in a moment he barely remembers. The crash, though, that hurts just as much as the first time. Confused and disoriented as he is, he still manages to fight off the first wave of Garrison techs who try to escort him into quarantine.

The last time the Garrison did that, they tricked him into lying down so they could strap him down and sedate him, and Shiro won’t go down without a fight.

He doesn’t win. He’s trapped inside the ship, limited in the movements he can make, and wave after wave of techs keep coming.

By the time he comes to, he’s back in the shack with Keith and the other paladins.

He immediately rolls over and shakes Keith awake. Keith wakes up and shies away from Shiro’s touch, just as feral and regressed as he was last time. Shiro’s heart sinks. He hasn’t had a lot of time to process what’s happened. He’s in the past. He doesn’t know how or why, but he hadn’t thought… he hadn’t considered…

He didn’t think he was alone.

Shiro is the only one who remembers.

He tries to think up a course of action while he’s changing into Owen Kogane’s clothes. Tomorrow, they’ll find the Blue Lion. After that, he can split open his brain and show the paladins the insides, the confusing mess of memories to convince them of the truth. (He ignores the silence in his brain, the way his heart panics when he realizes he can’t feel them.) From there, he can change the tide of the war, get the paladins home faster.

Until then, he’s on Earth, and there’s no time to change anything except-

Except one thing.

Last time, time had been short. He’d been certain Adam wouldn’t want to see him. He didn’t know if Adam was watching last night, if Adam was part of the crew who knocked him out to experiment on him.

He still didn’t know.

But he does know that if he passes up this last chance to speak to Adam, he will regret it. In this life, in the last, and in all the lives he might live.

He wakes up Lance next. A lifetime ago, Lance had complained for a week about not having a phone charger in space, so Shiro knows it’s with him. Lance barely hesitates before giving his dying phone to his hero. Should Shiro feel guilty? Should he be telling them all to the make their last calls to their families? Should he let them know what’s going to happen next and give them the choice? Is it fair to pit their happiness against the safety of the universe? He doesn’t know.

He steps out ono the porch. He dials the number by heart, praying that it hasn’t changed. He holds his breath and counts the rings.

“H’lo?” a sleepy voice answers.

“Adam.” Shiro chokes back a sudden sob, trying not the wake the others.

“Shiro-“ the voice on the other end gasps- “is it… it can’t… are you really-“

“It’s me,” he says. “It really is, I promise.” He scrambles for a way to convince Adam of the truth. “You came to the Kerberos launch. I didn’t expect to see you, but you were there anyway, right up against the barrier. And I thought it meant that you still cared. It meant more to me than I can ever say.” Shiro holds his breath, afraid of not being able to hear Adam’s response.

“They told me you died,” he says, and Shiro thinks he can hear Adam sniffling down the line.

“They lied,” he replies simply, viciously. Shiro looks out at the desert, still bathed in shades of blue during the pre-dawn. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d like to see you. If you’re willing. Can you get out of the Garrison?”

“A lot to ask-“ Adam sounds incredulous- “It’s not, but I just don’t know if I can. There was a foreign-object crash landing tonight and an explosion, the whole base is on alert-“

“Yeah. That was me.”

He hears a watery laugh. “Fuck, of course it was. Of fucking course it was.”

Shiro runs his flesh hand through his hair. “Adam, I’m going to be honest- I don’t have a lot of time. It’s now or never.” Shiro blinks back the tears that threaten to fall at the idea of never. If they don’t do this today, the Galra ship will reach Earth and take the Blue Lion. Shiro can’t let that happen.

He searches his brain for a place to meet. Adam didn’t know the desert as well as Shiro, and he’s never seen Owen Kogane’s downtrod little cabin. By now, the garrison is probably monitoring his grandparents’ house and their grave. He’ll be lucky if they’re not monitoring this phone call on either end.

“Do you remember Keith’s father’s grave?” he asks.

“Yes,” Adam says, suddenly sharp and serious. “I’ll meet you there. One hour.” And then, he adds hesitantly, “I hope you’re okay.”

He hangs up before Shiro gets to loose the _I love you_ that flows easily to his lips.

Shiro walks back inside to return the phone to Lance. He hesitates just a moment before he wakes all of the paladins.

They look so young like this- rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, gazing up at him. It strikes him suddenly that they are much younger than the versions of them he knew. They aren’t even paladins yet, just children who don’t know what’s ahead of them.

He gives them the choice and the facts as best he can- there’s a ship headed for Earth. It belongs to an evil alien empire that’s grown unchecked for ten thousand years. We have a chance to stop it. You have a chance to stop it. It will be years before you see your family again, but if you don’t come, the Galra will enslave them along with the entire planet.

It’s retrospect, it’s not much of a choice.

He and Keith leave while they make their decisions.

If the Garrison weren’t shady as shit, they’d probably have a BOLO on Keith’s speeder. Taking it is a poor decision, memorable and flashy as it is, but they don’t have another choice. Still, Shiro is cautious as he brings the speeder to the poor man’s graveyard at the edge of town.

There are no other visitors this early, pink dawn just beginning on the horizon. Keith takes the lead, walking a familiar path through the grid of graves.

They find Adam turned toward the sunrise, standing between headstones. He whirls around as they approach. When he sees them, his face breaks into a smile as dazzling as the rising sun.

“Keith!” he exclaims, sliding his way through the graveyard as directly and respectfully as possible. “Keith, thank God, you’re okay!” He reaches out to hug him, but Keith deftly leans backward to avoid his outstretched arms. Adam’s face drops slightly.

Shiro knows what Keith went through last time, but he can only imagine what Adam has gone through. He knows Keith had dropped off the grid right after his funeral. He imagines Adam’s desperate search for a sixteen year old boy who does not want to be found, and it makes his heart ache.

Adam closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, accepting Keith’s desire to not be touched. He opens them and makes a slow pivot to where Shiro stands.

Shiro hears his sharp inhale, but he focuses instead on the water that springs to Adam’s eyes. He steps forward slowly, unsure of his reception after his last rejection. Shiro nods, opening his arms.

Adam all but leaps forward with the attitude of someone jumping off a fifty foot cliff- as if he’s gathered all his courage, but he’ll never do it if he doesn’t do it now. He squeezes Shiro’s waist tightly, his head buried in the junction of his neck. Shiro feels tears, warm and wet, dripping into his collar.

“I told you not to go,” he cries. His hands clutch at Shiro’s back as if to reassure himself that he’s actually here.

Shiro tightly his embrace gently and leans his cheek into Adam’s hair.

“You were right,” he says softly. Adam gasps and his shoulders shake harder. “And I know you won’t understand, but I don’t regret going.”

Adam steps back to look Shiro in the eye, tears still running down his face. His hand comes up to cup Shiro’s cheek, and he can feel his thumb resting on the edge of his scar.

“You’re missing an arm,” he says, aghast. Behind his back, Keith looks befuddled and outraged.

 “There’s more ahead of us than there is behind us,” he says to both of them, even knowing that they can’t understand. Not yet.

Adam looks at him in astonishment. Then, his lips press into a thin line.

“I love you,” he says seriously. “I never stopped loving you.”

“I know,” Shiro says earnestly. He moves a hand to squeeze Adam’s hip reassuringly. What happened between them was never because of a lack of love.

Adam continues his confession. “I’ll love you for all the days I might live. When I broke it off before Kerberos-“ his voice catches- “Takashi, I was wrong. I was scared, and it cost me time we could have had. Please, I-“ He covers his face with a hand as he starts crying again.

Shiro reaches up and gently removes the hand. Adam looks at him through his tears as Shiro brings his hand to his lips and kisses the palm of it.

“I love you, too,” he says, holding their hands together by his heart. He looks at the horizon, which is quickly edging its way into orange.

“We have to go,” he says. His heart sinks. He makes to step away, but Adam is holding his hand firmly.

“I’m not leaving you,” he says, fiercely. Suddenly, Shiro feels immensely humbled to have any part of this man’s heart.

Shiro flicks his eyes to Keith. “It’ll be dangerous,” he says. It’s part of the same speech he gave to the paladins an hour ago. “You might never see your family again.”

Adam’s brow wrinkles in confusion, but for reasons that Shiro can barely fathom, he takes him at his word. Love, he supposes, makes fools of all of us.

“I’ll call them on the way,” he says, and that’s that.

Later, when the ancient lion carvings light up blue and they fall through the cave floor, Adam’s hand in his.


End file.
